InformaCast - Trial

[msteeler]

Hello,

So I have installed a trial of InformaCast to see if it's something we would use. I have it working to where I can send messages to the display of our 7945's and 7965 phones. I'm running into an issue with sending audio to the phone. One of the audio tones I sent to my phone was a 4 second per recorded option that was on InformaCast. The message comes up on the display but all I hear is a 1/4 second beep, not the actual sound wave that I sent. There is a speaker icon on the display like it's playing the audio but there is no sound.... except for the short beep at the beginning.

Mulitcast issue maybe? Anyone else using this and have it working? Thanks

 

[pndscm]

We have installed InformaCast several times. Sounds like a multicast issue as you asked. We had a similar issue across an MPLS WAN, text but no sound until we fixed the MPLS/Multicast issue.

InformaCast is a great product. Their support is very good.

 

[msteeler]

What did you do to fix this? So far this is limiyed to the LAN. I'm running c2960's and have multicast enabled on them with all tie back to a c4503 with multicast enabled. I'm missing something. Thanks

 

[gfrock]

Did you get anywhere on this? I have the exact same scenario - Informacast text received but no audio on the LAN. Phone not only appears to be receving the audio based on the icons & lights, but a capture shows the audio is making it to the phone. Just not coming out of the speaker.

 

[msteeler]

Yes, I got it working. I guess it would depend on the type of switches you have. We have a 4503 at the core then 2960's in the IDF's that connect back to the 4503. Below are the commands I did on each switch and it all started working.

These are the commands for all layer 3 switches:

ip multicast-routing - (Enable multicast routing on all layer 3 switches)
ip pim rp-address x.x.x.x - (I used the IP adress of VLAN 15, which is the voice management VLAN)


interface vlan 6 - (This is our 1st floor voice VLAN)
ip address <address> <mask>
ip pim sparse-dense-mode - (on all voice VLANs you will add this command)NOTE - also add this on any interface that would tie two layer 3 switches together, like port-channel. If your other switches are layer 2 then do not add this to those switches.

interface vlan 11 - (Second floor voice VLAN)
ip address <address> <mask>
ip pim sparse-dense-mode


interface vlan 15 - (Management VLAN - Voice)
ip address <address> <mask>
ip pim sparse-dense-mode


For any layer 2 switches add the below command:
ip igmp snooping

 

[gfrock]

Even though I was seeing traffic to the phone - it did come down to the multicast settings you commented on. Not exactly the same for our enviroment the idea is the same and we have it working now.

It was very misleading that the phones acted like they were paging. For anyone that runs into this trouble - know that it is your multicast setup. We chased firmware, phone models, etc believing we had it configured where we needed it. Once we had our VLAN's playing nicely it all came together.

 

[pndscm]

We built tunnels across the MPLS and it solved our issue.